Throughout the course of the L.A./Long Beach port driver strike, Capital & Main will be running photos from the marine terminals and truck yards where drivers and their supporters have gathered.
One hundred twenty truck drivers who haul freight to and from the twin ports of Los Angeles and Long Beach went on an Unfair Labor Practice strike Monday against the three companies they work for. The work stoppage, which has no announced end date, was called to protest alleged retaliation by Green Fleet Systems, Total Transportation Services Inc. and Pacific 9 Transportation, as well as the drivers’ long hours and low wages. Perhaps more important, the strikers are motivated by their determination to end the companies’ practice of classifying drivers as “independent contractors” – a status that allows the firms to treat their workers as second-class citizens and to avoid contributing payroll taxes to the state and federal governments.
» Read more about: Scenes From the Port Truck Driver Strike: Skechers on the Hot Seat »
One hundred twenty truck drivers who haul freight to and from the twin ports of Los Angeles and Long Beach went on strike Monday against the three companies they work for. The work stoppage, which has no announced end date, was called to protest alleged retaliation by Green Fleet Systems, Total Transportation Services Inc. and Pacific 9 Transportation, as well as the drivers’ long hours and low wages. Perhaps more important, the strikers are motivated by their determination to end the companies’ practice of classifying drivers as “independent contractors” – a status that allows the firms to treat their workers as second-class citizens and to avoid contributing payroll taxes to the state and federal governments.
On Wednesday rock-and-protest icon Tom Morello showed up on Terminal Island to support the strikers. The Rage Against the Machine guitarist and Watchman singer strummed a guitar labeled “Black Spartacus”
» Read more about: Scenes From the Port Truck Driver Strike: Tom Morello Performs »
Byron Contreras has seen almost everything in his 15 years as a truck driver, but there’s one thing he’s still looking for – respect.
That word comes up repeatedly in a conversation with Contreras, an employee of Green Fleet Systems who, along with 120 other drivers, walked off the job Monday, slowing down operations at the nation’s largest port complex. The drivers and a small army of supporters have been picketing the yards of Green Fleet, Total Transportation Services Inc. and Pacific 9 Transportation, as well as marine terminals at the Ports of L.A. and Long Beach.
The strike – the fourth one in the last year involving local port truck drivers – comes as the port trucking industry continues to reel from a string of devastating decisions by courts and government agencies. These rulings have confirmed what critics have been saying for years – that the mistreatment of truck drivers is not only immoral,
» Read more about: Wheel Man: Interview With a Striking Port Truck Driver »
One hundred twenty truck drivers who haul freight to and from the twin ports of Los Angeles and Long Beach went on strike Monday against the three companies they work for. The work stoppage, which has no announced end date, was called to protest alleged retaliation by Green Fleet Systems, Total Transportation Services Inc. and Pacific 9 Transportation, as well as the drivers’ long hours and low wages. Perhaps more important, the strikers are motivated by their determination to end the companies’ practice of classifying drivers as “independent contractors” – a status that allows the firms to treat their workers as second-class citizens and to avoid contributing payroll taxes to the state and federal governments.
Today workers at the Port of Savannah, Georgia also threw up picket lines to protest similar treatment by local trucking companies. According to WJCL TV, Teamsters Local Union 728 “has called on the Georgia Ports Authority to come out publicly condemning the classification of port truck drivers as contract employees rather than full-time.”
» Read more about: Scenes From the Port Truck Driver Strike »
For the fourth time within the past year, port truck drivers have struck short-distance hauling companies over a list of unfair labor practices that include low pay and the endemic misclassification of drivers as “independent contractors.” Misclassification has condemned drayage employees who work at the Ports of Los Angeles and Long Beach to a status of modern serfdom. Port drivers often work 16 hours a day and are financially responsible for the fueling and upkeep of their high-maintenance vehicles – yet their take-home checks can amount to less than minimum wage, thanks to company deductions that charge drivers for everything from gas to insurance.
The strike began early Monday, when drivers who work for Green Fleet Systems (GFS), Total Transportation Services, Inc. (TTSI) and Pacific 9 Transportation (Pac 9) began picketing the companies’ truck yards, as well as the marine terminals of the two giant ports, which receive 40 percent of the nation’s imports.
Skechers, one of America’s largest footwear companies, can run, but it can’t hide.
A report released Wednesday by the Los Angeles Alliance for a New Economy (LAANE), Out of Step: How Skechers Hurts Its California Supply Chain Workers, exposes the company’s troublesome labor practices. It is not a pretty sight.
The report reveals the mistreatment of the workers who deliver Skechers’ products — primarily shoes, apparel and luggage — from ports to warehouses to retail stores around the country and around the world. In doing so, Out of Step also exposes the huge gap between Skechers’ carefully crafted image as a hip retailer, which has led it to become a $1.8-billion corporation, and the reality of a company for whom truck drivers and warehouse workers labor under harsh, stressful, and exploitative conditions.
Skechers recently overtook New Balance to become the fifth-largest athletic-footwear brand in the country.
Pity the poor, beleaguered Malibu homeowner. Median income over $135,000 is about two-and-a-half times the County average, and the average home’s value is so far past the County average that the Census Department literally doesn’t count that high. Good for them. But they’re also the NIMBY champs, they don’t like sharing funding with poor schools, and in their free time, folks in the ‘Bu go around erecting illegal signs to cheat you and me out of our right to access the public beach. They have it rough and, as the front page of the L.A. Times explained, Airbnb is making it worse.
Malibu homeowners have some reasonable points: “party houses” that disturb neighbors and probably violate zoning ordinances, and millions of dollars of lost city revenue. At the same time, it’s hard to get too worked up over the poor,
» Read more about: The Enemy of My Enemy Is Still a Jackass »
It’s 5:45 a.m. on Wednesday morning and it’s been a long night for Dennis Martinez and his fellow port truck drivers.
Martinez is nearing the end of a 48-hour strike against Total Transportation Services, Inc. (TTSI), the logistics company for which he has worked for two and a half years. The drivers are about to go through the toughest part of the two-day action – asking the company they have been striking against if they can return to work.
The fatigue shows on Martinez’s face. He hasn’t gotten much sleep but he expected that. He knew taking on a wealthy company wasn’t going to be easy.
A slender man dressed in a gray Aero sweatshirt, jeans and tennis shoes, Martinez is 29 but can pass for a teenager. He keeps headphones in his right ear just in case he needs a pick-me-up from Daddy Yankee and Pit Bull, two of reggaeton’s biggest artists.
» Read more about: Daring to Dream: Portrait of a Port Driver »
The 48-hour strike by harbor truck drivers ended at dawn today. The haulers have returned to work after drawing an unprecedented amount of public attention to their cause – and without facing dismissals or other forms of retaliation from the three companies they targeted. Those firms — Pacific 9 Transportation, Total Transportation Services, Inc. and Green Fleet Systems – stood accused by the drivers of misclassifying them as “independent contractors,” even as a growing body of labor court rulings shows that the truckers are company employees. As such, they should be entitled to overtime wages, workers compensation, disability and an array of other benefits.
By being placed in the limbo of contractor status, however, the drivers are responsible for all their trucks’ upkeep, fuel and insurance. As a result, like the vast majority of American truckers, port drivers in Los Angeles and Long Beach must subsist on poverty wages.
Some of the drivers joined the work stoppage,
» Read more about: Port Truckers End Strike, Return to Work Without Retaliation »
Port truck drivers today continued a 48-hour strike to press their demand to be treated as employees of trucking companies rather than as independent contractors. The distinction is crucial to thousands of drivers who service the nation’s largest port complex, including the more than 100 strikers who drive short hauls for Pacific 9 Transportation, Total Transportation Services, Inc. and Green Fleet Systems. Currently misclassified by the companies as private contractors, these drivers, like the majority of U.S. port truck drivers, are denied overtime wages, workers compensation, disability and a host of other benefits, and must pay for the fuel and maintenance of their vehicles. Furthermore, after paycheck deductions many drivers earn poverty wages despite working long hours during six-day weeks.
At a noontime media event held in Wilmington Waterfront Park, TTSI driver Dennis Martinez told a crowd that “We had to strike because they didn’t want to listen. They didn’t want to deal with us.”
The years-long fight of Los Angeles Port truck drivers to be recognized as company employees– instead of “independent contractors” who lack workplace rights and protections – burst into a 48-hour strike this morning. The work stoppage by drivers for four major trucking firms is organized by Justice for Port Drivers and is targeting the marine container terminals at the twin ports of Los Angeles and Long Beach.
Despite winning a string of labor court rulings in wage theft lawsuits, the drivers say they are still misclassified as independent contractors. That misclassification has meant that drivers are denied overtime wages, workers compensation, disability and a host of other benefits, and must pay for the fuel and maintenance of their vehicles. It has also guaranteed that after paycheck deductions, many drivers who work long hours during six-day weeks earn poverty wages.
This is the second strike in six months by drivers,
It’s been a long, dark road for America’s port truck drivers, but finally there’s a light at the end of the tunnel. After nearly 30 years of ruthless exploitation by the trucking industry, the drivers who transport the goods that fuel our consumer economy may be poised to rejoin the country’s middle class, thanks to an important determination by a regional office of the National Labor Relations Board.
Last month, the NLRB’s Los Angeles office announced the settlement of a casebrought by truck drivers against Pacific 9 Transportation Inc. The drivers alleged that the company had illegally used threats and intimidation to prevent them from exercising their right to form a union, a practice that is rampant across the country thanks to our lax labor laws.
But here’s where it gets interesting. Pac 9’s drivers are considered independent contractors by the company and, according to labor law, independent contractors —
» Read more about: America’s Sweatshops on Wheels Find a Light at the End of the Tunnel »
Almost 50 years ago, Bob Dylan recorded with an electric guitar and band for the first time and produced Subterranean Homesick Blues, a culture-altering event that claimed, among other things, that, “you don’t need a weatherman to know which way the wind blows.” That song signaled a cultural change that resonated with forward-looking people of the time, but the truth was ignored or dismissed by those who preferred to look back. Similarly, this is a moment when the wind is blowing strongly in the direction of justice, and those who ignore it risk being left behind.
In previous articles, we have highlighted the prevalent fiction of “independent contracting,” a deception that affects the 12,000 port truck drivers who dray goods out of the Ports of Los Angeles and Long Beach, among the 75,000 drivers nationwide. Drivers in the current system must pay a lease on a truck,
» Read more about: Port Drivers’ Misclassification Homesick Blues »
Twenty-seven port truck drivers walked into the Rancho Dominguez offices of Total Transportation Services, Inc. (TTSI) Thursday and presented their employer with a petition. Their demand was simple: to be properly recognized as employees. TTSI is one of the largest port trucking companies in the twin ports of Los Angeles and Long Beach. TTSI’s business model – like the vast majority of port trucking companies in the country – relies on misclassifying its drivers as independent contractors.
When companies like TTSI misclassify their employees, they not only deprive the public of much-needed revenue by avoiding taxes, they also deprive workers of hard-earned wages by deducting business expenses like lease payments and fuel from drivers’ paychecks.
As TTSI driver Jose Rosales states, “Some weeks we aren’t even breaking even. How can I build a future for my family this way?”
Rosales and his fellow TTSI drivers who delivered yesterday’s petition are also seeking recourse through the California Division of Labor Standards Enforcement (DLSE),
» Read more about: TTSI’s Port Drivers Demand to Be Treated as Employees »
What would you do if your employer charged you a fee for everything you needed to work for them: your office desk, your computer, your phone line, your chair, your share of the water cooler and internet connection? What would you do if at the end of a week you were left with just one percent of your paycheck after all these had been deducted? How long would it take for you to stand up and refuse to keep paying to access the tools that allow you to do your work?
As you can see in the paycheck image above, that is the situation that truck drivers from the port trucking company, Pacific 9 Transportation, are facing. Drivers at Pac 9 move cargo to and from the ports of L.A. and Long Beach. The trucks they drive are leased from the company at $125 per week ($537.50 per month). In addition to the lease,
» Read more about: Port Truck Drivers Seek Millions in Owed Wages »
Last Thursday the U.S. Supreme Court ruled in a case that had the potential to impact millions of people in Southern California – people who have been breathing cleaner air thanks to the Port of L.A.’s Clean Truck Program. The Clean Truck Program is an innovative policy that has been successful in reducing port-related truck emissions by as much as 90 percent. But it has enemies, most notably the trucking companies who profited from the dirty, unregulated system as they worked on behalf of Walmart, Target, and every other big importer.
The national trucking lobby, on behalf of these firms, sought to kill the program by challenging it in court. As we passed environmental and public health milestone after milestone, the trucking industry filed legal motion after legal motion, and the case bounced between all levels of courts. But Thursday was the big one—the highest court in the land finally weighed in on the legality of the program overall.
» Read more about: Supreme Court Blocks Industry Bid to Kill Clean Truck Program »
What do big banks and L.A. port trucking companies have in common? Fine print in contracts that traps victims into signing bad deals.
We’ve all signed our share of contracts. Rental agreements, cell phone contracts, car loans. You don’t need to be a legal scholar to understand the basic concept: Two parties enter into an agreement that lasts until a fixed date. And as frustrated as you may get with, say, your landlord, you know that at the very least what you’ve signed off on can’t change upon a whim. Even if you don’t like the terms, contracts are fundamentally about guaranteeing stability.
We take this for granted – but not everyone can. A case in point is drivers at Green Fleet Systems, a trucking company serving the Ports of Los Angeles and Long Beach.
In order to work as an “independent contractor” for the company,
Last week, we reported on the legal struggle at port trucking company Seacon Logix, whose drivers filed claims with the California Division of Labor Standards Enforcement (DLSE) seeking reimbursement for a number of wage-and- hour violations, including illegal paycheck deductions made by the company. After the DLSE ruled in favor of the drivers in early 2012 – finding that the drivers were not independent contractors, but were actually misclassified employees – the company appealed the ruling.
On Thursday, a California Superior Court judge ruled in favor of the drivers in every respect, coming to the same conclusions as the DLSE. The court found that drivers were misclassified and ordered the company to pay the four drivers $107,802. Five additional drivers at the same company have similar claims pending.
This is the first in an anticipated wave of rulings addressing conditions for misclassified port truck drivers.
» Read more about: Court: Seacon Logix Port Truck Drivers Are Misclassified »
It’s almost payday. Imagine if you went to cash your paycheck only to find that your employer had instead billed you for the opportunity to work for them.
For drivers at Seacon Logix, paying to work was only the beginning of the abuses they faced from their employer, a midsized port trucking company based in Carson.
A group of nine Seacon Logix drivers has persisted for almost two years in seeking to reclaim their wages even as the company has reached a new low in an already notoriously low-road industry.
Seacon Logix didn’t just evade the law by claiming that its employees were “independent contractors,” allowing it to avoid basic responsibilities, like payroll, income taxes and workers compensation insurance.
It didn’t just pass on its operating costs to drivers and force them to pay for vehicle leases, registration and insurance payments by illegally deducting them straight out of drivers’
» Read more about: How Low Can a Port Trucking Company Go? »
Every year millions of Americans are victims of what some call wage theft — a practice in which a company fails to compensate workers for their time, short-changes them on their benefits or intentionally misclassifies employees in order to save money. And even though all that is illegal, Kim Bobo, executive director of Interfaith Worker Justice and author of Wage Theft in America, says it’s surprisingly common in the U.S.
“Minimum wage and overtime violations are two of the most common ways that wage theft occurs. Another way is payroll fraud, when employers intentionally call people independent contractors when they are really employees. Now if your boss — not you — declares you an independent contractor, you probably aren’t one. Then there is also tip stealing. About 10 percent of tipped workers actually don’t get their tips; their employers just don’t give it to them,” says Bobo.